New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is likely to visit the US early next month and meet with the Indian diaspora, students and lawmakers, in what will be his first trip abroad as the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Sources in the Indian Overseas Congress (IOC), which is organising the tour, told ThePrint that Gandhi will have engagements in Washington DC, Texas, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Chicago at a time when the US presidential campaign will be in a hectic phase. The IOC is headed by Sam Pitroda.
“He (Rahul) is scheduled to address the diaspora during his stay. Like his previous visits to the USA and the United Kingdom, he will also hold interactions with students in prestigious universities. In Washington, he will have meetings with lawmakers of the US Congress and the Senate as well,” a Congress leader familiar with the plans said.
The visit is likely to last eight to nine days, an IOC functionary said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. A formal announcement is yet to come from the Congress, which reappointed Pitroda to the post of overseas chief on 26 June, less than two months after his resignation over a controversy sparked by his comments.
The functionary said the visit has been planned following requests from members of the diaspora who campaigned for the Congress during the Lok Sabha elections and also participated in the Bharat Jodo Yatras led by him.
The rise in the party’s Lok Sabha tally to 99 — the highest in a decade — and Gandhi’s subsequent appointment as LoP has piqued their interest, the source added.
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Rahul’s Cambridge remarks & Pitroda controversy
Gandhi last visited the USA in June 2023, when he held interactions at the University of Santa Clara and Stanford University. He also met entrepreneurs and techies at Silicon Valley, before heading to Washington DC to address a press conference at the National Press Club. He also spoke on the state of India-US relations at the Hudson Institute.
Before that, he was in the United Kingdom in February-March 2023. There, he addressed the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, the Indian Journalists’ Association, and the Chatham House think-tank. He also addressed an event at the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons.
His remark at Cambridge that “democracy is under attack in India” had angered the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which accused the Congress MP of “defaming” India on foreign soil. The BJP demanded an apology from Gandhi in Parliament as well, leading to disruptions.
“Everybody knows and it’s in the news a lot that Indian democracy is under pressure and under attack… The institutional framework which is required for a democracy: Parliament, a free press, the judiciary and just the idea of mobilisation, these are all getting constrained. We are facing an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy,” Rahul had said.
All these events were organised by the Indian Overseas Congress, which was headed by Pitroda. However, certain remarks made by him during the general elections landed the Congress in trouble.
In an interview with The Statesman in early May, Pitroda, speaking about India’s diversity and democracy, said that people in eastern India looked “Chinese”, those in the west looked like “Arabs”, those in the north like “White” people, while those in the south resembled people from “Africa”.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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